Michael Lippman

All' Angelo is one of the best Italian restaurants I’ve been to in Los Angeles in the 15 years I've lived here.  The cooking manages to be soulful, from the heart, while also being a bit outside the box, a bit inventive.  I went the other night with my wife and my good friend Patty, who's a superb Italian cook herself.  As Patty put it after the meal, "the food is just a touch challenging, each dish represents a really particular "take", and it's not necessarily exactly what you’d expect."  All of which, for me, adds to the pleasure of the experience.

We're greeted by owner Stefano Ongaro (previously the Maitre d' at Valentino, Celestino Drago, and Il Grano).  It's Saturday night and we’re fifteen minutes late for our reservation.  The place is packed. Stefano exclaims, "ah, yes, I was waiting for you!" -- which comes across not as a reprimand, but as a generous welcome.  My wife, who’s a tough critic of people, loves his greeting, and feels comfortable immediately.  Stefano leads us to our table, right in the middle of this relatively small, rectangular, crowded dining room.  There’s a bustling, elegant foodieness to the feel of the place, upscale but unfussy.  Weird reference, but it reminds me of Pietro's in New York -- it's like someone brought tables into a room, put white table cloths over them, some decent chairs around them, and starting cooking good food.

I peruse the wine list, and eventually call over Stefano.  Employing my usual technique, I mention three or four bottles on the list that look appealing to me, signifying that I have a certain amount of knowledge about wine, and a lot of care.  Then, after pointing out these wines, I say, "or anything else, vaguely in that price range, which you think is really special."  He nods quickly, walks away and returns with the Guidalberto, the "second wine" of Sassacaia.  It's a spectacular choice -- we taste and it blows us all away. (It's still just a tad tight, so it doesn't evolve quite as magnificently as would have been ideal, but it's top notch from first to last, and I just got the new Robert Parker a couple days ago and the Guidalberto got a rave review and a 92 point rating).  It's a wine worth savoring, a wine that begs to be praised after each and every sip -- which we do.

We decide to order three course, two dishes per course, and share everything.  First course: tuna tartar on risotto cakes; and cauliflower timbale. 



The tuna tartar looks really basic.  Chopped tuna on top of a risotto cake.  Downside of going to a restaurant with other humans instead of alone: you have to order boring things like tuna tartar because they want to.  Upside: the tuna tartar turns out to be superb.  The tastes and textures are perfect.  It's like a great piece of sushi, similar idea to the Katsuya spicy tuna on rice cakes, but Italian.  The textures of the fish and the risotto meld, and contrast, beautifully.  Love.  The cauliflower timbale is more controversial at our table.  It's basically cauliflower and Parmesan cheese baked into a drum-shaped pastry mold.  My wife says it’s like a dish from Trader Joe's frozen section.  I think it’s awesome.  I dislike cauliflower as a rule, because it's bland and has a horrible texture.  Here the flavor is essentialized (and makes me appreciate cauliflower) and the texture is wonderfully custardy.

For the next course, we order 2 pasta dishes: First, the "signature pasta" (according to Stefano), which is the potato tortelli with wild mushrooms; and second, the "special pasta", which is linguini with Italian sausage and white summer truffles.  It's not like any of us are truffle freaks, but when the linguine with truffles arrives on the table it just has an energy around it.  We all dive in greedily.  The flavors and textures are incredible, and thank God the portion, including the amount of truffle, is very generous.  The truffle is subtle, but deep, and it casts its spell over the whole dish.  It takes me several bites to even notice that I'm eating sausage -- which is plentiful, and which I'm definitely eating -- but somehow the truffle subtly dominates. This is really a beautifully balanced dish, and we scarf it down.  The wild mushroom pasta is more challenging for the women, especially my wife -- the shrooms are so shroomy and spongy, and so not like the typical mushroom found in a pasta dish (I think they were wild oyster mushrooms) -- I love every bit of it, and eat most of the dish myself.  Really intriguing.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

For the final course, we order the pork Milanese, and the black cod.  The cod is perfect texturally, and fresh, but the flavors are nothing special -- I kinda don't get it -- almost every black cod dish I've ever had has had more flavor than this.  It’s the only disappointing dish of the night for me, a case where subtlety might have been carried too far.  On the other hand, the pork Milanese is subtle (and exquisitely thin), served with sautéed greens, but the dish grows on me and grows on me, until I'm addicted. 

Finally, a panna cotte with blueberries.  So light and airy, and the blueberries pop in the mouth.  Perfect dessert.

As we leave, Stefano is smoking out on the sidewalk with a friend, and interrupts his cigarette to bid us farewell.  I tell him how great the meal was, how divine the wine.  "Ah yes, you liked the wine, huh?"  "Amazing, thank you, yes."

It's the kind of meal that holds in the memory.  The food at All' Angelo is serious without being precious, and the entire experience, like a good and serious bottle of wine (very like the Guidalberto, in fact), intrigues as much as it satisfies, and so, one really wants to come back for more.